


all bark

by dekkaisdefyinggravity



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/F, Soulmates, its weird, mentions of murder and death and violence but nothing graphic, sort of, werewolf soulmates basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 19:00:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1277374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dekkaisdefyinggravity/pseuds/dekkaisdefyinggravity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cora has lived in a tree, alone, for a while now.</p><p>Late birthday gift for Erin!</p>
            </blockquote>





	all bark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosefingers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosefingers/gifts).



There's a girl who smells like wolf and murder sitting on Cora's doorstep. She has to be aware of Cora watching her - or maybe she isn't, not if she's in shock. Cora wouldn't be surprised, with the sound of her breathing. Cora arrived here the same way, once upon a time - covered in mud and maybe blood, not sure where she was but struck with the sense of safety and an instinct telling her she was where she was supposed to be.

(Cora's home doesn't have a doorstep but that isn't stopping the girl from sitting on it.)

"Why don't you come inside?"

The blonde mystery girl turns vaguely, blinking after a second.

"I don't know where I am." Her voice is rough and she doesn't clear her throat.

"No idea, but if you come inside you can get one journey to anywhere you want," Cora offers, holding a hand out with claws retracted. The girl looks at her hand for a long moment, licking her teeth.

"And after that?"

"I don't know, gone forever probably."

For some reason it's that that makes the girl take her hand and stand up. For the first time, Cora notices what she's wearing. It's pretty much all leather and form-fitting. She gets hit with a wave of nostalgia for family members she no longer remembers the names of. She thinks the forgetting must be a gift from the tree.

"You thirsty? Hungry?"

"No. I mean, probably, but," the girl finishes, not seeming inclined to say much else.

Cora nods and points into her house. "There'll be a door. Call me if you get hungry. I'll show you how to get food."

"Yeah? Thanks."

* * *

 

Everything is fuzzy and the girl smells like wolf but she doesn't seem like a  _were_ wolf to Erica. A forest spirit? Do they exist? Do they get offended if you ask? She isn't going to ask. Instead, she's going to figure out what happened to her right before she arrived. She is pretty sure it was bad.

There's mud on her and she can feel blood dried to her face. Erica was probably in a fight.

She came in through a forest that didn't _seem_ particularly magical, but she had felt that call to it so who knows? It's actually pretty likely that the girl's a forest spirit that lures innocent people (or maybe supernatural beings) to her lair in order to eat them.

For some reason, that doesn't bother her.

Erica can smell that the girl's coming towards her "room", a weird hollow that she travelled vaguely upwards to get to, and Erica unsheaths her claws. The blood tells her she can win fights.

The girl calls from outside the door, "I'm gonna show you how to get stuff from the tree."

Erica supposes that means she should get up.

She leaves the "room" as the girl continues talking.

"I think it's actually a forest spirit, not a tree. It acts how they're supposed to, from what I can remember of pack lessons."

Erica nods vaguely, hoping she gives the impression that her "pack lessons" prepared her for more than not dying in fights and not killing anyone at the full moon. She probably ends up just looking not-all-there, but it can't be helped. Something occurs to her.

"So you aren't one?"

* * *

 How do you respond to something like that? Does she look like a tree? A raccoon? A squirrel? She opens her mouth to speak, takes a breath, and closes it again. The girl doesn't seem like an omega, but her pack could have issues. Cora doesn't think of her family.

"Come on."

Cora places her hand in a nook in the tree. The nook probably leads to a branch on the outside of the tree or something - she's never been out to check. When her hand is fully inside the nook, it starts to grow larger and larger until her hand suddenly contains a watermelon. She pulls her hand out.

"It's pretty simple, but there're a couple of rules. It's never worked with my right hand, and sometimes it doesn't appear if I picture it instead of just thinking of the name."

"Can I try?"

"Sure."

The girl walks up to the wall until she's closer to both Cora and the wall than strictly necessary, and sticks her hand inside. She keeps pushing until her arm's in up to the shoulder.

She grins, and Cora thinks of all the stereotypes that say she's got to be a born wolf. She just can't picture the blonde  _not_ this way. It's something in the smile.

With a swift yank the girl pulls her entire arm and a piece of paper from the tree. She makes a show of reading it, then frowns.

"Your name's Cora Hale? Any relation to the Beacon Hills Hales?"

Cora drops the watermelon.

Shakily, she breathes in. "Impressive. Should have asked for a family tree though."

The blonde girl keeps looking at her.

"Yeah, some relation. I'm one of them."

Cora can sense her shock - she supposes it  _has_ been a few years. Hey, maybe Laura's rebuilt the house by now, created a whole new pack. The tree could take her to see.

"I'm Erica."

"Yeah."

Cora's got a lot to think about. (A little bit to drink about.)

* * *

"That laced with wolfsbane?"

Erica talks a lot. Or maybe she doesn't. It's been a few years since Cora last spoke to another person - at least a few years. When was that? The tree spirit makes everything all fuzzy and that's probably for a reason. Cora shouldn't find out about what got her here. Cora nods.

"Would there be a point?"

"What's the point right now?"

Erica sits with her, takes her drink. Erica's pretty hot. She has a nice name.

"You know what the pack in Beacon Hills is like right now? Can you tell me how many are Hales?"

Erica is still sitting next to her, tapping a claw on the beer bottle - she's wolfy way more often than Cora is. The beer bottle doesn't have a brand but it doesn't taste like shit so, hey! Go tree. Erica seems to be deciding what to say.

"One. But another one hangs around a lot."

"So that's Laura and... Derek?"

Erica's heartbeat does a thing. She's excited or scared, probably.

"Derek and Peter. They don't really talk about their family."

That means Erica doesn't know if they think about Cora or if they ever hear news of her - something. Something had happened. Her pack? Her pack had fallen apart - died?

How long has she been in this tree?

* * *

For the first time, the tree is resisting her. Not like she's asking it wrong or anything - that's instinct by now. It's just refusing to give her what she wants. She can _feel_ the refusal. It has the ability to give information the way she's asking; it just doesn't want to. The tree is a protector but she no longer wants to be protected from  _this_.

Cora's thinking of it clearly, an article she sort of remembers that hopefully has enough information that she can figure out what really happened.

Frustrated, she goes to sit down in one of the chairs.

Fucking tree. It's  _her_ past, she needs to know it.

After a while, Cora's thoughts cool off, and when she's no longer so angry they turn to Erica.

Her new roommate. The tree took her in and she doesn't know how to feel about that; this girl has spoken to other people quite recently. Way more recently than Cora. She has no reason to be self-conscious - Erica's not exactly the judging type. Still.

* * *

"Want to spar? If we're gonna be living together."

Erica looks over at her with one eyebrow raised. "Yeah, sure."

It's not to be. Through some quirk of fate (or meddling tree spirit) they've never before both been wolfed-out at the same time, and the second their eyes lock while glowing unnaturally, they both stumble. Cora swears.

"Oh,  _fuck_ me," she growls. This isn't what she wants, it always means a bigger responsibility in the pack, everyone  _knows_ that. That means they're going to have to find a pack, or Cora's going to have to join Erica's.

Erica's eyes are wide, and Cora is reminded that Erica didn't know what tree spirits were supposed to look like. 

"What the hell just happened? Was that the tree?"

Cora smiles despite herself. Erica knows like nothing - who the hell was her alpha?

"Were you ever taught in pack lessons?"

"No?"

"Jesus."

"We were a bit busy."

"Hunters?"

Erica tilts her head. "I think so - some other stuff too. I can't quite remember what."

"It doesn't matter what it was. Your alpha should have found the time," Cora mumbles. There's no excuse for neglectful alphas.

 Shaking her head, Cora gets back to business. "You've heard of soulmates, right?"

Erica's eyes widen.

"It's not exactly like that! It's just a good starting point."

Listening to Erica's heartbeat, Cora waits for it to settle before carrying on. It's only polite - the bond's always a shock, especially to the unprepared.

"A lot of people do like to look at the bond as a soulmate thing, but really all it tells you is that the people involved  _can_ be compatible in a way that benefits the pack. A lot of alphas never form bonds because of how much everything they do affects the pack, and there are never bonds between two omegas," she explained. She was directly quoting what she had been taught at age six. "There are other packs that believe different things about the instinct, but that's what we've always believed in the Hale pack."

"Well I'm pretty sure you just taught me more than Derek ever did."

" _Derek's_ your alpha?"

* * *

Cora never actually said much about  _their_ bond, and Erica's still feeling off-balance, so she doesn't want to be the first one to bring it up.

It felt like being struck by lightning, and Erica wonders how many of those popular images of romance actually come from real werewolf things. What the fuck is her life? Wondering about the way werewolves impact pop culture from behind the scenes is just fucking sad.

The tree can do games consoles. Erica is reconnecting with Mario Kart on DS. Bowser is an absolute fucking dick and Luigi is the worst of douches.

Fucking Luigi.

He knocks her off Rainbow Road and she tosses the DS behind her, listening for the weirdo wind chime sound that tells her the tree's reclaiming a gift.

She goes to find Cora.

* * *

"Erica! Can you ask the tree for an article about whatever happened at my last pack? The tree won't give me anything."

Does this bond give her special insights into Cora's emotions, or is she just painfully bad at pretending not to care? It's probably the first one.

"Yeah, sure. Hey, can we talk?"

Erica, on the other hand, is simply painfully bad at pretending not to care.

She pushes her hand into the gap and focuses. Reluctance is projected into her mind, but the paper appears between her fingers soon enough.

"Here."

Cora grabs it from her and reads over it twice. The first time, her eyes move at that speed Erica's only ever seen on werewolves, but she keeps holding it for a long time after that. As the smell of despair grows thicker in the air, Erica can feel her concerns growing less important. Cora lets the article drop.

"They're all dead. They took me in because they could tell I'd been a pack wolf, even though I'd been an omega for years. They were good people. Hunters are everywhere you go, they won't leave anyone in peace ever. Are they like that in Beacon Hills?"

It's foolish to think of Beacon Hills as different from anywhere else but it was the fairytale kingdom where she grew up and Cora wants to believe in  _something._ Why not the place where her only remaining family live?

"There are hunters but some of them are usually friendly. One of them's dating one of us." There is definitely more to remember, something vital about Allison. Allison's one of the blurriest figures in her memory, second only to Boyd. That probably means terrible things for Boyd and Allison.

"Can we go to Beacon Hills?" Cora has never sounded vulnerable in Erica's presence but she's asking a lot more than she's saying, and that's something.

Erica nods, but then says, "After we talk."

Cora walks to a chair. "About the bond?"

Erica follows her and sits on the same chair, keeping eye contact as she clarifies, " _Our_ bond."

Cora takes a  deep breath.

* * *

Next to a massive tree stump appears a a thick tree which disappears in a gradient about two meters up. It is there for three seconds before it vanishes, and leaves in its place a sap-covered lump, the edges of which form the shape of the now-vanished roots. Two figures separate from the lump, and no sap sticks to them when they do. They fall over getting out of it and clamber to their feet, blonde taking a second longer than the brunette.

At a normal volume the brunette remarks that it is a full moon tomorrow.

At a volume inaudible to any human more than an inch away, the blonde whispers, "She went off the rails and he's-"

A more audible choke.

The brunette moves herself to the front of the blonde's body and brings their faces closer together with a hand on her companion's neck. They are silent for a long time.

The blonde kisses the brunette long and deep.

"Let's go find our family."

 


End file.
